If I ever become a Saint – I will surely be one of darkness. I will continually be absent from Heaven – to light those in darkness on earth – St Mother Teresa.
Father Brian Kolodiejchuk, MC, Ph.D. is the postulator of the Cause of Beatification and Canonization of Mother Teresa of Calcutta and director of the Mother Teresa Center in Rome. He edited and wrote the commentary for the book Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light, published by Doubleday, on September 4, 2007.
In March 1999 he was appointed Postulator of the Cause of Beatification and Canonization of Mother Teresa of Calcutta and had the joy of seeing her beatified on October 19, 2003.
Born in Winnipeg, Canada, Brian Kolodiejchuk obtained a B.A. in Philosophy from St. Michael’s College of the University of Toronto, Canada, in 1977 and his M.A. in Philosophy from the University of Manitoba, Canada, in 1981. He received a M.Div. in Theology from St. Joseph’s Seminary, Dunwoodie, New York, USA in 1985 and went on to obtain a Ph.D. in Organizational Psychology from Saybrook Institute, San Francisco, USA in 2001.
Father Kolodiejchuk’s 20-year association with Mother Teresa began in 1977 when he joined a new group of contemplative brothers she was then starting. He later joined the priestly branch of Mother Teresa’s religious family, the Missionaries of Charity Fathers, at the time of their foundation in 1984. He was ordained to the priesthood in June 1985 in the Ukrainian Catholic Church of St. John the Baptist in Newark, New Jersey, USA, by the late Metropolitan-Archbishop of Winnipeg, Maxim Hermaniuk, C.Ss.R
Tom Thomas brings to you this exclusive interview with Fr Brian that we hope will give our readers unique insights into the persona of Mother Teresa and her great love for the Indian people, whose light shone brightly to help the unwanted and unloved not only in the slums of Kolkata but all over the world. Let us learn from her example on how to be a Light to Others. Excerpts:
The image one has in India is of Mother Teresa being a great Saint who cared for the unwanted and dying, all her life. However, having followed her closely for so many years, can you tell what she was like before hearing Christ’s call? Somewhere in your book “Come Be my Light”, we read surprisingly that she liked good things, comfort etc. and the life she chose to live in obedience to God’s call was so drastically different from what she liked. Can you explain more about this?
Mother Teresa was human, as are all saints, so there should be no surprise that she liked good things, etc. However, her passionate love for Jesus led her to give up everything, including the legitimate comforts of life, to love and please Jesus alone. She was ready to do anything to give up her own will and do His Will, for example, her vow to “never refuse Him anything.”
The Mission that Mother had to have a unique Indian congregation with Indian dress and local sisters from every region they were to serve. Can you share more about the love that Mother had for India? As it is impossible even for an Indian to love the unwanted of India as she did.
Mother fulfilled what Jesus and Our Lady asked of her, which was revealed to her on Inspiration Day (10 September 1946). Jesus in the Eucharist (received daily at Mass and adored for an hour each day) gave her all the strength, courage and grace to live like Him, to love and serve the most abandoned and rejected, first in India and then throughout the world. She heard the cry of Jesus in the poor, “I Thirst” and “My God, why have you forsaken me?” responding to His words in Mt. 25:40 “Whatever you do to the least of my brothers, you do it to me.”
Again, from your book, we come across many instances of Mother reading many books. Was she a prolific reader? Where did she find the time to read? Can you give us a list of some of her favourite books/sayings/verses?
We are not aware of her being a prolific reader, but we know Mother did her spiritual reading as part of her regular spiritual life (30 minutes each day).
In addition, when she was travelling, even if she had a sister companion, after praying the Rosary she might have read a book which she carried with her. There were some books in her room that she would have read, for example, the Life of Christ, One with Jesus, Imitation of Christ, Imitation of Mary, Mary at the foot of the Cross, and Only Jesus.
A lot of the “Come Be My Light” consists of extensive letters, which are so intense in expression that Mother wrote to her Spiritual Advisor Father Van Erem and Archbishop Ferdinand Périer, S.J. These letters, spanning many years, show the obedience that Mother had in waiting for an official response to her need to break away from Loretto convent while balancing her impatience and belief that God was calling her to act without delay. Can you please comment on these and what lessons we can draw from this especially in terms of learning to be obedient to higher authorities?
Mother was convinced of that her call was from God but wanted that call to be confirmed by Church authority (both the Archbishop of Calcutta and her Superior General in Loreto). She had the vision of faith that Christ spoke through his chosen instruments, the Archbishop, her confessors and superiors. She was not blind to human defects in Church authorities, but she was convinced God spoke through them all the same. A superior may make a mistake, but we never make a mistake in obeying, she taught.
Inner darkness of the Soul. It is difficult for anyone to function with an “empty tank”. Yet that is what Moher did over extremely long periods as her period of darkness of Soul was over many years while she had to keep giving of herself to her Sisters and all those who depended on her. This seems almost like an impossible task for anyone. Can you please describe this in detail?
During her years as a Loreto nun Mother Teresa kept growing in her union with God, passing through the active and passive nights of sense and spirit described by St. John of the Cross. Johannes Tauler vividly describes the suffering of the person going through such a trial:
Then we are abandoned in such a way that we no longer have any awareness of God, and we fall into such anguish that we no longer know if we were ever on the right path, nor know if God even exists, or if we ourselves are alive or dead. And so an anguish besets us that is so strange, it seems as if everything in the entire world were joining together to afflict us. We no longer have any experience or awareness of God, but everything else seems repugnant to us as well, and it seems we are trapped between two walls.[1]
An important key to understand Mother Teresa’s darkness in her years as a Missionary of Charity is the fact that she had now reached union with Jesus, the state of contemplative prayer. In his book, The Fire Within, [2] Fr. Thomas Dubay states that in this state of union, the person experiences consolation or the joy of union as well as moments of dryness and longing for even greater union. Exceptionally, Mother Teresa did not experience again the first characteristic, the consolation and joy of union (except for about a month in 1958), but she did experience both extreme dryness and a very intense and even painful longing. The great Dominican theologian, Father Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, sheds light on Mother Teresa’s particular experience; he writes:
The lives of some great servants of God … make one think, however, of a prolongation of the night of the spirit even after their entrance into the transforming union. In such cases, this trial would no longer be chiefly purificatory; it would be above all reparative. . . . The common opinion is that the servants of God are more particularly tried; … following the example of our Lord, they must work by the same means as He used for a great spiritual cause, such as the foundation of a religious order or the salvation of many other souls.[3]
This is how Mother Teresa lived her union: paradoxically, being united to Jesus by not experiencing that union. Mother Teresa often stated that the greatest poverty in the world today is to be “unloved, unwanted, uncared for”[4] – and she was experiencing this with Jesus. At the same time, this very experience united her more closely to those she served, the poorest of the poor who are the most “unloved, unwanted, uncared [for].”
To understand this, we need to realize that for Mother Teresa the thirst of Jesus is the unifying element of her vocation and her religious charism, her spirituality and mission. The thirst of Jesus had a tremendous impact on her heart, a heart so in love with Him.
From the cross Jesus cried out, “I thirst.” From the beginning of her new mission, Mother Teresa understood this intense, “painful” (as she described it often, following the Lord himself[5]) thirst of Jesus as a thirst for love and for souls. She would quench Jesus’ thirst for love by her passionate love for him, by her intense desire to return love for love. Secondly, she would quench Jesus’ thirst for souls by, as she expressed it, “laboring at the salvation and sanctification of the poorest of the poor.” Mother Teresa in this way joined, “I thirst,” (Jn. 19:28) which reflects her calling to satiate Jesus’ thirst (her aim) and “you did it to me” (Mt. 25:40), which reflects the means of doing it. Mother Teresa was so united to Jesus in will, thought and sentiment – she had such strong faith, hope and love – that He could share for so long and so intensely His most painful suffering – the torments of His Heart (as He had said to her in 1946) – that He underwent during His agony in the Garden and then on the Cross. Besides being a way of satiating Jesus’ thirst for love and living in union with Him, the darkness was also a way of satiating His thirst for souls in solidarity with the spiritually poorest of the poor, all those of whatever position who feel “unloved, unwanted, uncared for”.
Love of God enabled Mother to do His Will completely in life. Can you talk a bit more about this? What kept Mother going through all these challenges?
Short answer: pure faith and heroic love. Furthermore, she strove to be faithful to God’s call rather than being successful.
Having known Mother so closely, do you feel the Missionaries of Charity is functioning today as she would have wanted? Do the current leadership of the Society fulfill the expectations of Mother?
I believe that Mother Teresa laid the solid foundation upon which the Sisters continue to build. There is no perfect congregation and there are no perfect leaders, but the Sisters and their superiors (General, regional and local) sincerely try to remain as faithful as they can to the legacy Mother Teresa left to them.
The Society faced some challenges last year in India with allegations of child trafficking etc. and in your opinion, has this affected the efforts of the Society in any way in India?
The Society belongs to Jesus and Our Lady. Allegations, criticisms and failures are part of human life. God takes care of His chosen ones in His own Providence just because we belong to Him.
Can you share the Spiritual and Religious practices that Mother followed daily/weekly/monthly/yearly and what she insisted that her Sisters follow too for our own education?
The Sisters follow the Constitutions and the same practices as Mother did. They begin the day at 4:40 in the morning, pray Morning Prayer (Lauds) and have a half hour meditation followed by Mass. They have midday prayer, spiritual reading, and a Holy Hour each day. They pray Evening Prayer (Vespers) and end the day with Night Prayer at 9:00 PM.
Mother had a great love for India and its people. Can you share some of her sentiments about India that she expressed to you (and others) on most occasions?
The very fact that Mother Teresa became an Indian citizen, wore the Indian sari, and spoke Bengali and Hindi shows that Mother loved India. She closely followed her motherly care and ‘friendships’ with the leaders of the country and the states, for example Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, Jyoti Basu and many other eminent people so that they can serve people better. The way Mother respected the various faiths, values and cultures of India also indicate Mother’s love for India.
Keeping with the Indian ethos during her time, Mother always used to tell suffering people from other faiths, “You pray to your God, I’ll pray to mine for healing”, thus thwarting any allegations of conversions. Also, adding to her response to another conversions allegation as “I convert you to be a better Hindu, Muslim or any other faith!”. What are your thoughts?
The way Indians revere Mother as their saint (someone divine), whether they are Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist or of any other faith, also shows that here intention was to bring God’s love in their hearts (see some words from Mother and Religions).
Here are some quotes from Mother Teresa on religion and conversion.
- “Religion is meant to be a work of love. Therefore, it should not divide us and destroy the peace and unity. Let us use religion to help us become one heart full of love in the heart of God. By loving one another, we will fulfill the reason for our creation – to love and be loved.”
- “We are all capable of good and evil. We are not born bad. Everybody has something good inside. Some hide it, some neglect it, but it is there. God created us to love and be loved…we are all His children – Hindu, Muslim, or Christian.”
- “Let us not use religion to divide us. In all the holy books we see how God calls us to love. Whatever we do to each other we do to Him because God is our Father. Religion is a work of love – and not to destroy the peace and unity.”
- “Some call Him Ishwar, some call Him Allah, some simply God, but we all have to acknowledge that it is He who made us for greater things, to love and to be loved. What matters is that we love. We cannot love without prayer, and so whatever religion we are, we must pray…”
- “Our work in India and elsewhere is not intended for conversions, but to bring people particularly those in need, closer to God through our works of charity.”
- “Oh, I hope I am converting. I don’t mean what you think. I hope we are converting hearts. Not even Almighty God can convert a person unless that person wants it. What we are trying to do by our work, by serving the people, is to come closer to God. If in coming face to face with God we accept Him in our lives, then we are converting. We become a better Hindu, a better Muslim, a better Catholic, a better whatever we are and then by being better we come closer and closer to Him.”
- “Works of love are works of peace – to love we must know one another. Today if we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other – that man, that woman, that child is my brother, my sister. If everyone could see the image of God in his neighbor, do you think we would still need guns and bombs?”
- “Be kind and merciful. Let no one ever come to you without coming away better, happier. Be the living expression of God’s kindness; kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile. Kindness in your warm greeting.”
- “In our Congregation we have a fourth vow of giving wholehearted and free service to the poorest of the poor, to the unwanted, to the unloved, the uncared, to the hungry, to the alcoholic, to the rejected, to people who have no one, nobody; it doesn’t matter what religion, doesn’t matter what color, doesn’t matter what caste, doesn’t matter what nationality.”
[1] Johannes Tauler, quoted in R. Cantalamessa, “Mother Teresa, ‘the night’ accepted as a gift,” originally published in Italian in Avvenire, 26 August, 2007. English translation by Matthew Sherry in http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/164985%26eng%3Dy.html. Accessed on 25 September 2012.
[2] Thomas Dubay, Fire Within: St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, and the Gospel–on Prayer, San Francisco, Ignatius Press, 1989.
[3] Father Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., The Three Ages of Interior Life: Prelude of Eternal Life, vol. 2, trans. Sister M. Timothea Doyle, O.P., (St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Co., 1948; Rockford, Ill.: Tan Books and Publishers, Inc., 1989), pp. 503-04.
[4] See for example, Come Be My Light, p. 292.
[5] See for example, ibid., p. 310.